Sermonizing Harmonizing

One of the ways worship leaders can better serve their congregation and their pastor is by choosing songs intentionally and purposefully to underline and respond to the preaching of God’s word. Not every song has to line up perfectly with the theme of the sermon, or be based on the same passage of Scripture, but when all of the songs during a service are completely unrelated to each other and the message, it can result in no single message standing out at the end of the day.

In most of the weekend services at my church, the sermon comes toward the end of the service. Because of this, I’m usually most concerned that the closing song, which comes directly after the sermon, is carefully chosen.

For years I tried to do this mostly by guessing. If the pastor thought to mention something to me about what kind of song would work, then that would be great. But most weeks I was just hoping I got it right. Sometimes I would. But other times I would find myself sitting in the service thinking, “I wish I knew he was going to say that!”

So in recent years I’ve become more diligent about hounding the preacher in the week leading up to his sermon, to get as much information as I can to help me pick songs, particularly the closing song, that both underline and help people respond to the message.

Here are some ways you might be able to do the same:

If he writes it out word-for-word, get a full transcript
Whenever John Yates, our senior pastor, is preaching on a weekend, I will get a word-for-word transcript of his sermon on the Thursday leading up to it. This is invaluable. I take time to read it, chew on it, and then prayerfully discern what songs would help people respond to this most effectively.

If he preaches from an outline, ask to see that outline
Some of the other pastors at my church don’t write their sermons out word-for-word. So I’ll just ask for their outline, or any notes they have. Sometimes I get a lot, and sometimes I get a little. Either way, it’s still something.

If he hasn’t yet finished either a transcript or outline, ask him what he’s thinking
I’ll oftentimes email whatever pastor is preaching and say something like: “I’d love to have any crumbs you can throw my way to help me pick a closing song that works well with your sermon. Any ideas? Specific songs? Themes? Anything?” I’ll almost always get a helpful response. I don’t need an awful lot of information – just some sort of indication of the direction of the sermon.

The key question to ask yourself and the preacher is: how would you envision people responding to this message through a song?

Don’t try to summarize the entire message in a song. You probably won’t be able to, and even if you are, it might be information overload. Just help them respond. It will look different every Sunday, but by asking yourself this question, you’re helping to avoid a mishmash of messages. Say that five times fast.

What We Sang This Past Sunday and Why We Sang It

I always find it helpful to hear what other churches are singing, what new songs worship leaders are introducing, and how worship leaders pick songs to match the theme of a service or sermon. So, from time to time on this blog, I’ll walk you through what songs we sang on a Sunday morning at my church, and why I picked them.

The sermon text of the morning was Hebrews 12:3-17, and the sermon title was “Learning From Discipline”. Based on this I attempted to choose songs that highlighted God’s faithfulness, his restoration, and the cross.

We started off the service with “Praise is Rising” by Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown, a song that cries “Hosanna! You are the God who saves us…” and proclaims the good news that: “in Your kingdom broken lives are made new. You make us new”. We sang that verse a couple of times in order to emphasize that truth. This song can be overdone – especially as an opening song – but it seemed to work this particular week.

After the welcome by one of our pastors we sang four songs. First, “Here is Love Vast as the Ocean” written by William Reese in 1850 and adapted by Matt Redman a few years ago with a new chorus. This focused us the cross of Christ and his ”grace and love like mighty rivers”. We sang the third verse that was written in 1900 that says “thou alone shall be my glory, nothing in this world I see. Thou hast cleansed and sanctified me. Thou thyself hast set me free”.

In response to this we sang “A Thousand Amens” by Tim Timmons which is the old text of the Doxology set to new music, along with a new chorus based off of Psalm 92:2 “unfailing love comes with the morning. It’s your faithfulness we sing at night” and Romans 2:4 “it’s your kindness, Lord, that leads to repentance.” (Note that the original version says “…leads to our healing”. I change it to match the scripture reference.) After this we sang “How Great is our God”.

We closed this opening time with a song called “To Him Who is Able”, written by Lou and Nathan Fellingham and Gary Sadler. This is a rich song focusing our attention on Jesus. The second verse says “to him who is able to save me completely, who has poured out his blood as the offering for sin, and raised me to life by the power of the Spirit, and sealed me for heaven to reign there with him…” before leading into the chorus which says “to him be the glory, blessing and honor and praise. All saints now adore him. Worship the glorious name of Jesus our King”.

Following the readings, creed, prayers, and announcements, we sang a song by Matt Redman called “This is How We Know”. Since this was directly before the sermon, I thought it would be helpful (as always) to focus on God’s love for us as displayed in the cross. The chorus says, “For you so loved the world that you gave your only Son, love amazing, so divine, we will love you in return. For this life that you give and this death that you have died, love amazing, so divine, we will love you in reply, Lord”.

Robert then preached on the text from Hebrews, and we responded with the song “O Great God” by Bob Kauflin, the text of which is based on a Puritan prayer found in the book Valley of Vision. The song talks about God disciplining us by occupying “our lowly heart” and conquering “every rebel power”. The last verse is a powerful prayer: “help me now to live a life that’s dependent on your grace, keep my heart and guard my soul from the evils that I face. You are worthy to be praised with my every thought and deed. O great God of highest heaven, glorify your name through me”.

Stay On the Melody (Please)

One simple thing that many worship leaders could do that would immediately increase their effectiveness by leaps and bounds would be to stay on the melody. By resisting the urge to break off of the melody and sing higher, or sing harmony, or sing a cool little blues run, they would instantaneously be easier to follow, less distracting, less annoying, and more confidence-building.

The average person in the congregation is an average singer. You have some who are really good and some who are really bad, but most people are just average. They can carry a tune, enjoy singing, and while they wouldn’t want to sing in front of people with a microphone in front of their face, are generally willing to give most songs a try.

If you’re leading worship it means that, for the most part, you’re somewhat comfortable singing in front of people. You might have a great voice, you might have an average voice, and you might have a below average voice. But that doesn’t matter. Whatever kind of voice you have – you should be singing as averagely as possible. Nothing exciting, nothing special, and nothing noteworthy except for it’s averageness. Sing the melody, sing it confidently, sing it clearly, and sing it only.

I know, I know. There are occasions when it works to go off the melody a little bit. But those occasions are (or at least, should be) so rare, that your general rule of thumb should be to sing the melody and only deviate from it when it won’t throw anybody off. Anybody.

Most of the time when a worship leader sings anything other than the melody, it throws people off. Maybe not everyone – but someone. This is why it’s usually (always?) a bad idea. Control yourself, keep it together, and sing so Felix the dishwasher repairman can follow you.

I think there are several worship-leading vocal myths that can get into our head and make us distracting singers. See if you recognize any of these:

  • The higher you sing the harder you worship
  • The more you emote the more they’ll emote
  • You should sound like the guy/girl on the recording
  • You should be able to sing as high as Chris Tomlin
  • The level of your anointing directly corresponds to the highest note you can hit. If you can break an E – you’re really anointed
  • You can make people get into it if you sing really intensely (and maybe even growl)

None of these are true. But we can start to believe them and before we realize it we’ve developed some bad habits.

Really – worship leaders should be singing the melody 99% of the time. If this isn’t a big problem for you, that’s great. If this sounds impossible, then I’ve got a fun challenge for you: the next time you lead worship – sing only the melody on every single song. Your congregation will thank you – probably quietly – but trust me, they’ll be thanking you. They’re the ones who asked me to say something to you about this. I’m kidding. Or am I?

The Wonderful World of E – Pt. 2

This week I’m taking several days to demonstrate some techniques for playing chords in the key of E. Yesterday I showed how you can use the E chord-shape to play an A and a B. Today I’ll show how you can use an A chord-shape to play a B, C#m, and E.

You might already know all of this – and that’s great. If you don’t, try practicing these new chord shapes over the next few weeks and months and they’ll become easy and comfortable.